Seniors can often simplify medication routines

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Miscommunication between
healthcare providers and patient concerns over drug interactions
lead to many seniors having an unnecessarily complicated
medication regimen, a new study finds.

With a very complicated routine, "it's easier to forget
medications," said the lead author, Dr. Lee Lindquist, a
geriatrician at Northwestern University Feinberg School of
Medicine in Chicago.

"If you consolidate the regimen, you can know that you're
done at the end of the day," Lindquist told Reuters Health. For
example, if a patient is prescribed three medicines that are
each supposed to be taken twice per day, it's likely they can be
taken together each time.

For the study, published in the journal Patient Education
and Counseling, nurses visited the homes of 200 patients over
the age of 70.

All the participants had been discharged from the hospital
one month prior and they averaged nearly 80 years old.

The nurses asked participants how and when they took their
medications in a given day. Then a pharmacist and a doctor
looked at each patient's medication list to see the lowest
number of times per day the participant could take his or her
medications.

Next, they compared this number to the actual number of
times per day that each patient had said they took their
medicines.

Lindquist and her team found that 85 of the participants -
just over 42 percent - were following a medicine regimen that
could be simplified. Of these, 53 participants, or more than one
quarter, could cut the number of times they took their medicines
by once per day; and 32 participants, or 16 percent, could
reduce that number by at least two times each day.

The team also identified the most common reasons for an
overly complicated medication routine. One was patients'
concerns about interactions between food and medicines, and
between different medicines. Another was misunderstanding
medication instructions given to the participants by healthcare
providers like pharmacists or physicians.

Patients should check with their doctor before changing the
way they take their medicines, but the results of the study show
the importance of a discussion between patients and providers
about the logistics of taking necessary medicines, Lindquist
said.

"That dialogue has to start; patients need to ask their
pharmacist or physician whether they can cut down medications or
consolidate them," she said. The big questions patients should
ask their doctors, she added, is "can I make it easier on me?"

One way that people taking many medications can work with a
doctor on the simplest regimen is to walk through how they take
medicines each day.

Dr. Serena Chao, a geriatrician at Boston Medical Center who
was not involved in the study, said patients should bring all
medicines to each appointment, and arrive "prepared to talk
about what time they take their medications."

"Go through all of the details, and then with the doctor,
figure out whether the routine can be consolidated," Chao told
Reuters Health. Because after all, keeping track of lots of
medicines can be difficult - but the goal is to minimize the
inconvenience they pose to living everyday life.

"Your medications should not dictate your life. They should
be working for you, not the other way around," said Lindquist.